On Monday night, a Turkish choreographer named Erdem Gunduz stood still in Istanbul’s Taksim Square — the site of weeks of anti-government protests — staring at a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who founded modern, secular Turkey.

He stood there silently for hours, and soon other demonstrators began to notice. From the Agence France-Presse:

The choreographer’s plan was to stay standing still there for a month, breaking every 24 hours for three hours’ rest, while a friend took his place.